Fudan University (FDU) is a national public university in Yangpu, Shanghai, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education and is co-funded with the Shanghai Municipal Government. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction.

The university was originally founded by the Chinese Jesuit priest Ma Xiangbo in 1905. It is a member of the C9 League.

The university traces its origins to Fudan College, established in 1905 by Chinese Jesuit priest Ma Xiangbo. Prior to founding Fudan, Ma had established Aurora College, where the Society of Jesus frequently opposed and intervened in student movements. This led Ma to create a new institution, Fudan College, as a preparatory school for higher education with government funding, offering three-year education for general or specialised tracks. After the 1911 Revolution, Fudan continued to offer general rather than specialised education.

Fudan became a private university in 1917, establishing specialised departments including Chinese literature, foreign literature, banking, business and administration, economics, politics, civil engineering and psychology. In 1921, university preparatory education was ended and the university began to adopt an American-styled credit and elective system, per a national policy. In 1928, Fudan was registered with the Ministry of Education of the newly founded Nationalist government. In 1929, the university was organised into four faculties, namely Liberal Arts, Science, Law and Commerce. In 1937, it moved to Chongqing due to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

In 1941, with the approval from the Nationalist government, the university was transformed from a private university to a national university, which allowed the government to control Fudan's major posts, including the president, provost and dean. In early 1946, the university returned to Shanghai. In China under Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Fudan University was tasked with providing a Western-style education to Chinese students to support the country's economic reconstruction efforts.

In 1949, the university was taken over by the Shanghai Military Control Commission of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as the CCP defeated the Kuomintang in the Chinese civil war. By 1952, the CCP remodelled the Chinese higher education based on the Soviet model, leading to the inclusion of Communist ideology in Fudan's educational offerings. Fudan was transformed into a Soviet-style comprehensive university, with departments of arts and science of other universities merged into Fudan, leaving Fudan the only university to provide basic science and arts in Shanghai. In China under Mao Zedong, Fudan University was tasked with transmitting socialist values to further the agenda of the CCP. During the Cultural Revolution, the teaching at Fudan was completely halted due to political turmoils.

In 2000, Fudan University merged with Shanghai Medical University, which was founded as the Fourth National Chungshan University School of Medicine in 1927, to form the new Fudan University.

In December 2019, Fudan University changed its constitution, removing the phrase "academic independence and freedom of thought" and including a "pledge to follow the Communist party's leadership", leading to protests among the students. It also said that Fudan University had to "equip its teachers and employees" with "Xi Jinping Thought", leading to concerns about the diminishing academic freedom of Fudan.